Measuring Progress towards Ending Homelessness

In order to know whether efforts to end homelessness are successful it is important to create a baseline measure to mark our starting point. Communities need to monitor and evaluate their progress – both successes and failures – so that they can report their outcomes to funders, taxpayers and interested residents. The COH works to support and build community capacity in adopting standardized methodologies and indicators for collecting data on the incidence and prevalence of homelessness (Point-in-Time Counts) and producing ‘report cards’ on progress in addressing homelessness. Local level data will be aggregated to gauge results and progress at regional and national levels. In collaboration with the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, the COH developed a series of reports to help monitor the state homelessness in Canada. We have also created a national framework for counting people sleeping on streets or in shelters (or other facilities).